New York City is an incredible place when you consider the incredible mix of people and their varying levels of personality, experience and insanity. What’s even more amazing are the things you’ll overhear people discussing in the most mundane places. The incident that inspired my writing this entry was my having lunch in a pizza joint one cool September afternoon when two people sat down at the table in front of me engaged in a heated debate.
The two were getting very animated, their voices passionate and unyielding as they exchanged volley after volley of search marketing knowledge nuggets. Normally, I would be straining my ears to hear the discussion but their voices were so elevated from the banter that all I had to do was sit back and sip on my soda.
From what I could gather, they were from a boutique agency looking to promote search marketing as one of their offerings. Their big discussion revolved around whether or not marketing managers interested in search marketing would use search engines to find search specialists. Well, I dare say that someone interested in search who doesn’t use search engines is like someone trying to get a reverse mortgage for a house in which they have no equity in. But let’s continue this line of thought and move the question ahead one step, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200.
Besides wondering if people looking for search marketers will use search engines, let’s ask the question, “What search engine will people looking for these services use?” We can sit here and throw out pros and cons for most of the engines, but let’s move this discussion from the theoretical to the practical. Let’s look at the paid listings across the big three engines to see where search marketing companies think their prospects are!
Typing “search engine marketing” into the query line returned 11 paid search entries on the first SERP with approximately 362 advertisers in total for the keyword. Included in the list of advertisers is Yahoo. Judging by the sheer volume of advertisers and the presence of another search engine advertising on Google, it seems that Google is taking an early lead.
Yahoo
Using the same search query, I found 10 advertisers on Yahoo’s first SERP. Only, this time, I found two major search engines advertising on Yahoo. Read it and weep, Google, TWO! Oh wait, Yahoo is advertising itself on its own engine. I don’t know if that counts or not. But Google’s here, so let’s say it’s a one for one deal for now.
Bing
The count for paid advertisers with the same search query is nine. No major engines advertising on Bing.
So, if you went by sheer numbers, search marketing companies feel that Google is the place to be. But if you take the lead from the big two engines, people searching for search engine marketing are looking for search practitioners on Google and Yahoo, but not on Bing. Why, you ask? Especially considering that Bing is the Decision Engine, you’d think people trying to decide on a search company would use Bing. But Google and Yahoo don’t think so. What are your thoughts? Do you think Google and Yahoo actively dismiss Bing? Even though Yahoo and Bing are in a joint search venture, does this make a difference?
